The entity known as the Red Rider, or the Red Ghost as well. Multiple sightings by people living in the Arizona country side of the 1890’s report a huge beast terrorizing the country side.
A Hellish steed, ridden by the devil himself. The story, as recorded in local news papers started on a small farm...
During the evening hours one night, a lady of the home was out bringing in the laundry from the line when she was brutally attacked. The woman's husband, hears screams and returns to find his wife on the ground. Sadly, he found her in a crumpled mass. It was stated by the witnesses, it appeared as if the poor woman had been trampled by a full herd of cavalry.
Another woman in the family that was inside the home heard the commotion. She reported seeing the creature from a window. She stated to the husband that the best was massive, it was black and red, and ridden by the devil himself.
Incensed with anger, the husband and another man go out to hunt the beast. They track it by the abnormally large prints to a small cabin where they are informed by another witness. This witness reports the same details but also that the beastly entity leapt from a canyon and seemed to fly.
The sightings continued throughout the area. The hunters find more and more people who claim the same thing. But some state that it has wings, some say it is even 30ft tall, and one even stating that he saw it kill a grizzly bear. So what could this beast have been? A cryptid? Some omen of the end times perhaps?
The hunters continue and even say they camped one night and the beast had surely surrounded them. They reported strange noises and something trampling near camp. Eventually after days on the hunt they come across an opening and see a massive animal lurking in the distance behind some shrubbery.
The men train and fire their rifles into the creature as it runs away from them. It endures multiple shots from their rifles as it flees.
Once the beast falls to the ground the men rush over and are even more shocked at the sight.
At their feet lay a very large and now very deceased camel. That is right a camel. The creature, emaciated and now dead. IT had been adorned with colored cloths and normal riding gear, but also something else. A ghastly skeleton of a man strapped to its back.
Apparently, camels were brought across the sea and into the southwest arid regions during the years prior to the event. They were seen as better fitting to the region than horses. But once the railroads came in they became largely useless as pack animals. So there were wild camels actually wandering the southwest in the following years.
No one will ever know why the corpse was strapped to the back of the poor camel, But the witnesses report the body was so tightly tied, that the creature may have been in constant pain Perhaps this and the dying human on its back drove it mad. It is possible that the rider could have been strapped to the creature and left to die by bandits or someone else. We will never know, and we will never know how witnesses got the reports so wrong. Or maybe that wasn’t the real red ghost and the true beast will ride again one day...